How to use Skype to Record Calls or Interviews with Hot Recorder (windows)

Hot Recorder is one of the most effective tools to record any VoIP call, not only Skype. However, if you are a Skype user you can rest assured that it is a tool that’s very well integrated with the Skype application. Below are the steps to do the same:

Set Up Skype to Record Calls: Installing and using Hot Recorder is about as simple as it gets. There is virtually no setup. After you run the install and launch the application, it attaches to your Skype window. Whenever you move your Skype window around the screen, the Hot Recorder window stays attached at the upper left edge.

There are a few things that you may want to configure in Hot Recorder depending on your preferences. For example, in the options menu, you can assign a folder on your computer to save all of the audio files. The Sound Quality and Recording Type settings are also important because they will ultimately determine how quickly the size of your audio file grows. If you have a huge hard drive and are only recording the call for yourself, by all means keep the sound quality high and use Stereo sound. However, if your intent is to email the file or you’d like to store it on smaller media that does not have quite as much storage capacity; you may want to consider using Medium or Low quality.

Recording Skype Call: When you hit “Rec” and then dial a phone number or connect with another user on Skype, you will see the Hot Recorder display status change to “Recording” and the size of the audio file updates as well so that you know how much space the audio file is going to consume on your hard drive or USB drive. The current time duration of the call is also displayed, so if you are running a Podcast or radio show and you do not want the conversation to go beyond a certain time interval, you will know exactly how long the discussion is going. If there are parts of the conversation that you do not want to record, just click on “Pause,” and then when you are ready to start rolling again you can click “Rec” again and the call will continue. Once you click on “Stop,” you will be presented with the screen above so that you can fill out details about the phone call including who you talked to and anything else you want to note about the call.

The important field is “Conversation with” because the listing of your calls shows this clearly, and it is one of the best ways you will have of remembering your calls. You can use any file name convention you like, so keep it in a format that you will be able to organize. You can easily sort all your interviews by date. Once you click on save, you will see the application encoding the audio and saving it to file. One interesting thing to note here is how the audio will get encoded when you choose audio. Hot Recorder saves the conversation in 2 channels it means that during playback your interviewee’s voice will play on the left and your voice will get played on the right. This is actually pretty cool if someone has stereo headphones. Unfortunately if one of your listeners has mono headphones or will be listening to your audio file on any mono device the conversation will seem oddly “one-sided.”

Playback and Extra Options: Playing conversations back after you are done recording is as simple as clicking on the “Player” tab. When you click on the Player button, you will see a list of all of the conversations you have had. Because the saved recordings are displayed by whom the conversation was with. If you accumulate a lot of conversations over time, there’s also a search feature available. There are a couple of cool extra features with Hot Recorder, and one of them is an answering machine. You can be anywhere in the world and never miss a phone message again as long as you have Internet access to check your email.

If you run podcast/radio show, another cool feature are the “emotisounds,” which let you embed various sound effects into the conversation. This can get really hilarious if you play it right. Whenever someone says something that you do not like, just click “boo” or if they’re boring you to death just click on “Snore” – you will have your listeners in stitches. If you use Hot Recorder that is, recording phone calls for later playback and transcription to text, the free version is more than enough. However if you want to convert your files over to MP3 or WAV format so you can use them anywhere, you will need the inexpensive premium version that comes with an embedded Audio Converter.